


Bedroom Hymns

by KatStratford



Series: Serena Stories [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Chris Is A Sweetheart, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Oral Sex, beginning relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 03:35:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3635091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatStratford/pseuds/KatStratford
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time <i>this whatever thing</i> happened, it started with them drunkenly pretending to be together to get a sketchy guy to stop following her around a party. It ended with him gasping into her neck, “Please, <i>please</i> tell me you’ve done this before.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedroom Hymns

**Author's Note:**

> This is all [Sevenfoxes](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfoxes/pseuds/sevenfoxes) fault, as usual.

Serena holds her cold hands to her face, palms pressed to her cheekbones, trying to push away the headache beating behind her eyes. She’s deciding between a liberal application of Advil or alcohol when her phone chimes.

_How’d it go?_ She raises an eyebrow. She doesn’t even remember telling Chris about the photoshoot.

_Pics: good Everything else: total shit_ , she replies, breathing deep and pretending she’s not desperately hoping for an immediate reply.

The phone vibrates in her hand before she has a chance to beat herself up for her neediness on top of everything else. Want me to come over?

_Yes_ , sent before she can talk herself out of it.

By the time he gets to the house, she’s changed into yoga clothes she never actually wears for yoga and pressed a wet cloth to her stinging eyes, unsure if they’re irritated by the tears she’s holding back or the nasty, industrial-strength makeup remover the makeup artist had used to get the slap off her face. 

She looks at herself in the mirror as she puts her hair in a ponytail, feeling disturbingly removed from her reflection. She’s felt foreign in her own skin all day, first as her face was covered in thick layers of beauty product and her hair yanked this way and that, and then as her body was critiqued like a farm animal’s under bright lights and cold air conditioning.

Twelve months in LA and any delusions she had about the glamour of acting are long gone, but today was particularly bad. She’s infinitely grateful to have a friend who’s survived out here for a decade without opening fire on a press line, even if their friendship is in a weird place right now.

Chris walks in with a 12-pack of beer in one hand and raises his free hand to slide his fingertips across her cheek. She tilts her head up, but he just lightly kisses her forehead, the way he used to before they started this. Whatever. Thing. “This whatever thing” is the only way Serena can think to refer to the two times she’s had sex with Chris. Whenever she tries to think about them more specifically, she ends up either wanting to die of embarrassment or with her hand between her legs.

The first time _this whatever thing_ happened, it started with them drunkenly pretending to be together to get a sketchy guy to stop following her around a party. It ended with him gasping into her neck, “Please, _please_ tell me you’ve done this before.” She’d said, “yes, yes” and bitten her lip to keep from adding that the last (only) guy hadn’t been so fucking _big_. Then, just as it went from sort of awful and overwhelming to amazing, it was over. He’d kissed and kissed her, then said, “I have to go. I’m sorry,” and she’d thought she’d fucked up entirely and lost the only decent friend she had on the entire west coast.

But he came over the next time she asked (to watch a movie she’d already seen) and slid his hand up under her skirt, rubbed over her panties until she was whimpering. “Can you come like this?” he’d whispered, and she had, a little mortified at the way that he just _watched_ her. She’d caught her breath and gone to her knees, barely registering his, “You don’t have to,” because was he a fucking moron? Of course she had to. Like, physically, primal-y, had to get his dick in her mouth and his hands in her hair. Afterwards he’d pulled her up into his lap, kissed her, and finished watching the movie with her in silence. He’d hugged her goodnight and said, “Text me.” Except he texted her first and now here he is.

Chris deposits the beer in the fridge, grabbing two bottles in one hand and crossing the kitchen. He knows where the bottle opener is. He’s sat in this kitchen with her many times in the year since she moved to LA--giving her advice, laughing at her jokes, and sliding into his Boston accent for her when she was especially homesick.

He’s talking. She focuses on his voice as he hands her a beer. “So, bad day?” he says when he sees he has her attention.

“Yeah,” she replies. “Living room?” There’s no reason not to stay in the kitchen other than that she can’t deal with looking at him right now, with his stupid huge arms and stupid pretty face. “Uh, I’ve been sitting in the kitchen since I got home and it’s starting to drive me crazy.”

He smiles and bumps his shoulder against hers as he walks into the living room. He flops down onto her secondhand couch, arm stretched over the back. She tucks herself against his side, turning to rest her head on his shoulder. Chris has an endorsement deal with Gucci that gives him all their colognes for free, but he only ever smells like Old Spice. Serena snuggles closer. He runs a hand through her hair and says, “So, you wanna tell me about it?”

“Meh,” she says. “I just.” She should talk about this rationally, she thinks, so she pauses to get her thoughts together beyond _Life sucks and I want to go home_. “So this is easily the biggest, best piece of publicity I’ve gotten since I moved here, right?” she starts, and he nods. “Yeah, except instead of making me feel like acting was the right career choice, I have never wanted to go back to the east coast and enroll in a goddamn hippie liberal arts college more than I do right now.”

He laughs and says, “Would it make you feel better to know that I still feel like that sometimes? Some jackass asks me about my fucking workout routine for the billionth time and I start fantasizing about going into landscaping.”

Serena tilts her head, considers and rejects four different dirty jokes, then continues. “The worst part isn’t even that it went badly. The photographer was non-skeevy and I think there may be some good shots, but Jesus, the stylist and fashion director were, like, out of my worst nightmare.” She’s annoyed to feel the tears pricking at her eyes again and sighs loudly. “My hips,” she says, determinedly keeping her voice even, “Are apparently a serious problem. One I needed to hear about every three minutes or so.”

She peers up at him to find his face collapsed into a hard frown. “Huh,” he offers. “I feel like, you know, having, uh, knowledge of your hips? In my professional opinion, you were dealing with idiots.” 

“They’re _big_!” she snaps, parroting the editor’s tone. She’s suddenly angry in a way she’d been too stunned for at the time. “They’re disproportionate to the rest of my body! The stylist was despondent that none of the skirts draped right. The fashion director suggested liposuction.”

“You’re _twenty_!”

“Over the hill!” she replies with a sharp grin, warming to the ridiculousness of the story, the experience, and her entire damn life right now. “Don’t you know those starving Eastern European models peak at fifteen?”

The twist of his mouth sends a jolt right through her, makes her push her legs together and shiver. “I ever tell you about my first modeling gig?” he says.

“No. What was it for, underwear?” She’s amused to think that once, maybe, there was some version of Chris that was uncomfortable being half naked in public.

He rolls his eyes at her. “Nah, it was right after I got out here, when I was still trying to get a break. I had to promote one of the tv pilots I did, which somehow ended up with me posing for an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog.”

“When those were still a thing? Did they make you do anything homoerotic? Did you get bad-touched, Christopher?”

He pushes her shoulder then immediately undermines the gesture by grabbing her around the waist and pulling her back against him. “Would you let me tell the damn story? So, yeah, there I am giving the camera the puppy-dog eyes and thinking I’m hot shit, when the director or whatever looks at the cameraman and goes, ‘What are we going to do about his face?’ ”

“Oh, gee, they didn’t like the face you were making. Boo hoo, Captain America, your life is so hard.”

“Oh, no no no. That’s what I thought, though, so I was like, ‘I can do other faces?’ and the director was like, ‘No, honey, I’m not talking to you,’ turns to the photographer again and goes ‘just focus on his arms. We’ll fix the face in post or something.’ I was like, ‘I’m standing right here!’”

Serena snickers without meaning to and Chris’ face lights up in a wicked grin. “And that,” he concludes, “is why I look like the world’s saddest boy band member in those ads, which, by the way are readily available on the internet should you ever need a laugh.” 

She chuckles and says, “Oh, okay, so the next time a casting director tells me I need bigger tits I should tell him the story of the ugly duckling who grew up to be a superhero?”

Chris rolls his eyes, pulls Serena up and over so she’s straddling his lap, and says, “Yeah, then kick him in the balls and come see me.”

He kisses her then, and there’s none of the frantic, drunken lust of their first kiss or the sober semi-terror of their last kiss. It’s just good, and Serena feels all the negative noise in her brain go blessedly silent. “I like your face,” she says softly.

He smiles against her lips. “Thanks. I like your hips.”

Serena doesn’t mean to burst out laughing, but she does anyway.

“What?” he yelps, his face such a mess of confusion and dismay that she has to kiss him again, push her tongue past his lips and roll her awful-wonderful hips against him until he’s hard and rubbing back against her and, oh, shit, this is really happening again, isn’t it?

“They like you too,” she finally gasps as his mouth wanders to her throat. He looks at her like she’s lost the plot, and she adds, “My hips. They like you too.”

He finally laughs back, twists his hand into the front of her shirt and says, “Bedroom?”

“Yeah,” she replies, feeling like she’s falling from a great height. “Yeah.”

She’s not shy about being naked, never has been, but being naked with _him_ unnerves her. She can’t look him in the eye, her gaze drawn instead to his slim waist and the contrast between his pale belly and the dark edge of his boxer briefs. 

Serena steps forward, places her palms flat against the fabric at the top of his legs, and slowly rubs her hands up and down, fascinated by how the catch of the fabric over his dick makes him twitch and gasp. She presses her mouth to his chest, licks slow and lazy over a nipple, until Chris’s hand comes up and tangles in her hair, pulls lightly. “‘Rena. Honey,” he says deep and slow, like he’s having trouble speaking, and oh, she loves hearing him like that.

He tilts her head up into a kiss, slides his hands all over her and pushes his leg between hers. He grabs her ass and lets her rub herself off on his thigh until she’s so wet she can hear it. Serena wraps her hand around the head of his dick and strokes in time with her movements. They’re both moaning into an increasingly sloppy kiss and it could easily end like this, but that’s absolutely not what Serena wants right now.

She lets go of Chris and stumble-falls onto the bed, shimmying out of her underwear and saying “Now, okay? I don’t need...I’m ready. I need it now.” She isn’t sure how it’s possible to want him more now than she did the first time, but she feels like she’ll shake to pieces if he’s not inside her in the next ten seconds.

He drops his own underwear, kneels next to her, and says, “I. Okay. Yeah, okay.” He’s panting like he’s run a marathon and they haven’t even gotten to the athletic part yet.

Serena goes to lie down, but Chris catches her arms, pulls her to him as he straddles her, then turns her so she’s clutching the headboard. He’s pressed up against her back, big hand low on her stomach and dick nudging against her even as he murmurs in her ear, “Are you sure? For the record, I’d be really happy to eat you out right now.”

She groans at the thought. Maybe next time, if there is a next time. “Just fuck me, jackass” she grits out over the noise of her pounding heart. She feels more than hears him laugh.

It hurts, but the insistent pressure as he slowly pushes into her lights up Serena’s skin in a way that makes her feel fully in her body for the first time all day. He presses his face against her shoulder, says, “Oh. Fuck,” and the bare want in his voice goes straight to her cunt. The pain is gone when she rocks back against him, and he starts fucking her slow and hard, clumsily mouthing at the back of her neck as he thrusts. 

His hand slips down, rubs hard across her clit and Serena squeaks. He stops and says, “Oh shit, was that a good noise or a bad one?”

Serena turns her head and messily kisses him, “Not as rough,” she says. “And...oh. Oh, yes. Like that.” _Takes direction well_ , she notes absentmindedly as he gently strokes her with the tips of two fingers. She licks at his lips until her back protests. “Let me roll over,” she gasps. “I wanna see you.”

She sprawls across the mattress and wraps her arms around his shoulders as he fucks her hard and fast. He comes with a gasp before she does--which would be fine, except he stops his clever fingers too. Serena is past words and just kicks him. 

Chris kisses her messily and says, “Hang on. I’ll make it worth your while.”

She’s too surprised to move, splayed out like a rag doll across her bed and feeling like she’s got a full-body itch she can’t scratch. She figures she’s within her rights to groan loudly.

“Shhhh,” Chris says, returning and peering down at her with a little smile. The bed dips and something touches between her legs, gentle but making her hips jump nonetheless. “Sorry,” he murmurs, face tilted down, and she realizes he’s cleaning her off with a damp facecloth.

He’s still got that half-smile when he looks up at her again. “Go ahead and be as rough as you want. S’my fault for not getting you there and, anyway.” He shrugs, peers at her from under his eyelashes, and says “I like it,” in that thick voice she loves. 

Before she can stupidly say she doesn’t even know what he’s talking about, his head is between her legs, mouth pressing hot against her, and her hips involuntarily jerk halfway to the ceiling.

Serena thinks she might be experiencing sensory overload because she can’t tell if his tongue circling her clit is hot or cool, hard or soft, painful or perfect. Her body is twisting and rolling and she doesn’t know if she’s trying to get away or get closer. Chris wraps his big arms around her hips, and she grabs his biceps and tries to ground herself. 

She thinks she’s got herself under control, but then he presses his whole mouth to her and sucks and her entire body seizes, pleasure rolling through her in waves. Some distant, small part of her is horrified by the noises she’s making--awful, loud wailing like she’s being tortured--but her mouth is as out of control as the rest of her. By the time Serena manages to take a deep breath, she thinks maybe the Earth’s plates must have shifted and dropped LA into the ocean, because she feels like she’s bobbing along on a gentle current towards an unknown land. Her next thought is that sex might be better than drugs.

Chris nuzzles at her hipbone, then the underside of a breast, then her neck, which startles an oversensitized gasp out of her. “Good?” he asks, with the smuggest smirk she’s ever seen on him. She’s too blissed-out to come up with a wise-ass reply, so she settles for kissing him until she stops shivering wherever he touches her.

“One of these days, we’ll manage to get dressed up and go out for dinner,” he eventually murmurs.

“Oh, is that what we’re doing here?” Well, shit. That wasn’t what she meant to say at all. 

He gives her crooked smile. “Fuck, I thought at least one of us had a clue.”

She smiles back, but there’s a knot in her stomach. “Sorry, I’m as clueless as you.”

He puts a hand on the side of her face, kisses her slow and sweet. “Half the time when I think about you, I want to bring you flowers. The other half, I want to walk into a police station and register as a sex offender.”

“I mostly wonder whether my mother will disown me or just bury me in a shallow grave in the backyard,” she sighs.

There’s a silence and Serena distracts herself by pulling the covers up and arranging them, since Chris isn’t making any move to get up and she suddenly wants a nap.

“So,” he finally says. “Dinner?”

“Yeah,” she says, pointedly ignoring the beat her heart skips. “Dinner.”


End file.
